King Arthur: Legend of the Sword

King Arthur: Legend of the Sword is the first legendary bomb of the summer, and it's only the second week of May.  Last year, we had to wait till late June until Independence Day: Resurgence showed up.  The movie is at times an incomprehensible mess, shot and edited as if the entire movie were a trailer with quick cuts, flashes to other things happening while something else is going on, and out of place voice overs.  The soundtrack at times sounds like music, and at other times sounds like someone just put a panting dog up to a microphone.  And the acting...Well, actually, the acting is not bad, but I doubt even Sir Laurence Olivier could save this.

The film is an interminable parade of bad ideas, many showing up one after another.  In retelling the story of the legendary King and his knights of old, apparently director Guy Ritchie decided to make it like one of his British crime capers that launched his career like Snatch or Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels.  That means that Arthur and his pals now talk like modern day wise guy British gangsters when they're around each other.  And while the story is fairly simple and basic, he decided to make it next to impossible to follow by adding a lot of unnecessary directing flourishes such as fast motion, rewinding the film to cut back to something earlier, and cutting back and forth between two scenes for no reason.  To add insult to injury, the movie looks awful, despite its reported $175 million budget.  The colors are often drab and dark, and the special effects look like something out of the late 90s.  When a giant CG snake shows up during the climax, it's kind of hard to look at because it's been so ineptly realized.

Here is a movie completely lacking in scope, grandeur and purpose.  You know, the kind of things one would expect in a King Arthur story.  Instead, we get one boring heavily CG battle scene after another, and a plot that we not only don't care about, but can hardly follow in the first place.  Characters kept on being introduced, but I often lost track of them in the muddled narrative, or just didn't care.  Here, Arthur (played by Charlie Hunnam) witnessed his father (Eric Bana) die at the hands of his treacherous Uncle Vortigern (a slimy Jude Law), after the villain gained ultimate evil power when he made a deal with a multi-faced octopus-like monster that apparently lives in the sewers beneath the castle. (Don't ask, the movie doesn't explain.) Arthur, a tiny boy at this point, escaped to a nearby village, and was raised by some friendly prostitutes.  He grows up to be kind of a street thug, hanging out with his rough buddies, and occasionally stealing from Vikings to give money to the women who raised him.

Arthur is soon kidnapped by some of Vortigern's goons, and forced to pull the sword Excalibur from the stone.  This is actually all a ruse, as apparently only the son of the rightful king can do so.  Vortigern wants to hold onto the throne that he stole many years ago, and needs to kill the heir to his brother, so he creates the sword in the stone contest to find out who he needs to bump off in order to keep on ruling the land.  Arthur pulls the sword out, and is rescued by a band of rogues, as well as a Mage (Astrid Berges-Frisbey) who apparently is allied with Merlin, although the great wizard himself never actually makes an appearance in the film.  And not only does Excalibur identify Arthur's royal bloodline, but it also gives him super powers and allow him to see visions of his forgotten past, as well as the future.  With the sword, Arthur and his friends will attempt to overthrow Vortigern, and build Camelot.

If only Legend of the Sword was as simple as I just described it.  The plot is told in such a way that it's next to impossible to remember what's happening, and why we're supposed to care.  Ritchie obviously cares little about the characters in his story, and only wants to stage "cool" sequences where giant elephants march across battlefields, and hundreds of faceless extras charge at each other and fight in incomprehensible squabbles.  There's little rhyme or reason to anything, other than you suspect Ritchie thought it would look good up on the screen.  He was wrong.  There's not a single visual or moment here that is memorable or even good.  And while the actors are clearly trying to rise above this material, the bloated mass that makes up the movie drags them down faster than you could ever imagine.

After the film mercifully ended after an overlong two hours, I felt like I had just watched the rough edit of a potential summer blockbuster, not the concrete vision of a filmmaker.  Parts are out of place, the editing and camera work is a disaster, and everything's just kind of blown up to this grand level of stupid.  I'll be doing my best to forget this one as soon as possible, except when I have to think of the worst films of 2017.

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